


Counting Down

by flawedamythyst



Series: Winterhawk Tumblr ficlets [14]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Timers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 04:36:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18793120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: When Bucky's born, there's over a hundred years on his soul timer.





	Counting Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Villainny (Nny)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nny/gifts).



When James Buchanan Barnes came into the world, tiny and red and deeply unhappy about the whole business, the nurse who weighed and checked him over took a glance at his soul timer to jot the number down on the official form and nearly dropped him when she saw it.

_876326.23.54_   
_876326.23.53_   
_876326.23.52_

It slowly counted down as she watched, eyes wide, desperately doing the math. 876,326 hours, 23 minutes and 51 seconds. Over one hundred years before this tiny baby was destined to meet his soulmate.

“Nurse, is there a problem?” asked the doctor, and she took a deep breath, shaking her head. She jotted the numbers down on the form and wrapped the blanket back around him, taking care to cover his arm before she handed him to his exhausted, beaming mother. The poor boy was going to spend enough time being the object of pity, his first few moments with his mother should at least be undimmed by it.

*

When Bucky Barnes first met Steve, he was wearing a thick band over his timer, and ended up with a black eye.

Over the next few years, he earned a whole host of other injuries in Steve’s company, but never took the band off.

It took until they were nearly adults, sitting on the roof of Steve’s building drinking the cheapest beer they could get, that Steve asked him about it.

“How old are you gonna be?” he asked, nudging at Bucky with his foot.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “How old am I gonna be when? When I finally get bored of dragging your ass out of shit?”

“Nah,” said Steve, “you know. When you meet your soulmate.”

All the easy happiness of a quiet night and an alcohol buzz fell off Bucky’s face. “Fuck off, punk, I ain’t telling you that,” he said. Everyone worked out exactly how old they’d be when they finally met their soulmate, but mostly they kept it to themselves.

“I’m gonna be 21,” said Steve, flatly ignoring the way Bucky had closed up, because they didn’t have secrets from each other and he didn’t see the point in starting now. “It seemed forever when I was a kid, but I reckon it’s a good age. I’m gonna be an adult, I’ll have everything together, but we’ll still have a good long time together.” He stopped and shrugged a bony shoulder. “If I don’t die young, of course.”

Bucky scowled. “Don’t say shit like that, punk, you’re gonna outlive every fucker here,” he said, in defiance of the way Steve spent every winter bundled up in bed coughing.

Steve just shrugged and took a swig of beer. “How old are you going to be?” he asked again.

Bucky was silent for long enough that Steve thought he wasn’t going to answer, staring out at Brooklyn before he downed the rest of his beer in one go. Steve reached over to get them each another bottle, mind wandering on to whether or not they needed to work out a way to get more, or if they were just going to savour this last one then go find something else to do.

“Old,” said Bucky, very quietly, and Steve looked over at him, at the tired, sad look on his face that he’d never seen before. “I’m gonna be real fucking old, Stevie.”

Steve shuffled over as he handed the bottle to him, pressing their shoulders together. “Guess I’m going to have to stay alive to meet them, then.”

*

When Sergeant Barnes was unconscious and broken on Arnim Zola’s operating table, one of the doctors picked up his right arm -now his only arm- and glanced at the number on it. He snorted. “We don’t need to worry about a soulmate ruining the program,” he said, showing it to Zola. “He will be an old man long before then.”

Zola looked at the ticking numbers and smiled. “Nearly another eighty years,” he said, and glanced at the slack face of the subject, thinking about where Hydra would be in eighty years, and how many more soldiers they would have had to go through to achieve their goals, replacing them as they grew old and useless.

It seemed a shame that a tool like the one he was going to build this soldier into wouldn’t last as long as Hydra had use of him. Perhaps there was a way around that. “Did Jürgen ever complete his research on cold storage?” he asked.

Two of the other doctors glanced at each other. “None of the subjects survived the defrosting procedure,” said one of them. “It was too much for the human body.”

Zola smiled. “Our new soldier will be able to survive it,” he said. “The Fist of Hydra will be the next step on from human.”

Eighty years. That meant they’d be able to operate the soldier well into the next century, a century that would be shaped to fit Hydra’s requirements. When he finally met his soulmate, it would be in a world created by his own achievements, in which Hydra would have the upper hand.

*

The Winter Soldier wore a leather cuff on his right arm. He never took it off, never wondered what was under it, and never thought about having a soulmate.

He didn’t need a soulmate. He had a mission.

*

It took Bucky three weeks after he’d left Steve by the side of the Potomac before he pulled the cuff off. His mind still felt fragmented, as if he were two different people who had been smashed into shards and then jammed together, too much and too close and none of it matching up.

He was staring at himself in a motel mirror, his brain aching with the effort of putting himself back together. He clenched his hands into fists and looked down at them, at the mismatch between them, and his eye caught on the leather cuff.

_Don’t take it off don’t damage it don’t think about it_ whispered the voice in his head that used to tell him what to do.

He was learning how to ignore it now, though. He tore at the cuff with a shaking hand, ripping it off, and stared down at the numbers counting down.

_17578.13.42_   
_17578.13.41_   
_17578.13.40_

A soulmate timer. Everyone had one, and he’d seen enough stop dead in his time, numbers stuttering to a stop as eyes went dead and hearts stopped beating, and yet he’d never stopped to think that he might have one.

A soulmate. He had a soulmate somewhere, who he was destined to meet in 17,578 hours, 13 minutes and 39 seconds.

Just over two years.

He took a deep breath, looking back at himself in the mirror. He should probably make sure he knew who he was by then.

*

When Steve said they were going to meet some of his friends at the airport, Bucky knew one of them was most likely his soulmate. As much as he tried to ignore the achingly slow crawl of the timer on his wrist, there was a part of his mind that always kept track, and there was only a few hours left.

He’d tried so hard to get himself in a place where he could meet a soulmate and have something to offer them, and now he was back to square one, on the run from the UN and heading off into a fight that he was fairly certain he was going to lose.

He watched the final hour tick down into minutes while Steve and Sam bickered about something outside of the car, waiting for these friends of Steve’s to turn up. At least if his soulmate was one of them that meant they knew how to fight, he thought miserably. Given how Bucky’s life kept going, anyone close to him would need to know how to protect themselves.

A battered van pulled up, and Bucky glanced at the ticking numbers one last time.

_1.31_   
_1.30_   
_1.29_

He tugged the cuff back over them, took a deep breath, and got out of the car, hovering back out of the way as Steve greeted the three people who got out. He glanced between them, wondering which of them it was. The tall, blond guy with the easy grin and the biceps that stretched out his shirt? The pretty woman in red with the defiant look in her eye? The rumpled guy who got over-excited about meeting Steve and shook his hand too many times?

God, Bucky hoped it wasn’t him.

In fact, he already knew who he wanted it to be.

The seconds counting down in his head ticked over into single digits and he took a deep breath, stepped forward, and held his hand out to the blond guy. “Hi, I’m Bucky.”

“I’m Hawkeye,” said the guy, taking Bucky’s hand. “I’m g-”

Bucky’s counter reached zero and he felt it like a jolt of electricity, at the exact same time as the guy stopped dead, his eyes going wide.

“No fucking way,” he breathed, eyes going down to the bracer that covered his own arm. “That was today?”

Bucky snorted and the guy looked up at him. Neither of them had let go of each other’s hand yet. 

“Hi,” said Bucky, and the smile came easily to his face. “I’ve been waiting for you for a really long time.”


End file.
